I think all of life is competing against your past self, and I don’t recommend ever comparing yourself to someone else, but it’s hard not to reflect on one’s contributions to their community and those in need when you hear stories like Gia Tran.

Met a woman on a bench here in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. She went from homeless to an SRO recently, as she had a double mastectomy and needed the stable shelter. The city just announced modular housing options she told me, but she’s ineligible as you have to be homeless to apply.

I recently installed QubesOS 4.0 on an Intel NUC (model: nuc7i5bnh). It works fine, with one caveat. After you reboot the first time, everything just works. However, after first use & dom0/template upgrades, I attempted a reboot and realized EFI boot was not working. In order to resolve this, you manually will have to follow the steps at Boot device not recognized after installing. Note, every kernel or Xen update you do afterwards, you will manually have to go through this process again if you want your OS to boot without manual intervention.

For those who don’t identify as a techy, QubesOS is one of the more secure operating systems out there, one of two I recommend — the other being OpenBSD. Neither of these is easy to use. If you want to eventually get there, I recommend you try something like debian or Ubuntu in the interim, as they are a lot easier to learn yet have a slight learning curve. All of these operating systems replace osx or windows, and are fully free forever, and open source. If you feel like going down a rabbit hole regarding operating systems, check out distrowatch.com which follows all of the open source operating systems.

I managed to miss most of the Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford hearing today, but caught the end of it. I knew going into it that not much would likely sway in public opinion — you either hate change and want to maintain your Christian values, or you believe women by default and want them to have a voice.

One of the common arguments coming from the Christian/Conservative perspective is a misunderstanding of why women don’t report issues. As this case will likely also result in how abortions will be in the US legally moving forward, this is a highly political case that also strikes to the faith of Christians and Conservatives across the USA.

Frustrated by the outcome, I decided to go and grab a late lunch after the hearing. As I came out with my take-out foot, there was a man, clearly high, bent over and banging metal sticks on the ground. A women who was in front of me, clearly in a hurry, didn’t walk the long way around, but cut between him and a wall where there was about a 10′ gap. As he heard her walk by, he turned, startled, showing evidence of his drug use as he started to pursue her with sticks raised, yelling every terrible profanity one can call a woman. She didn’t turn back, but kept walking, as to avoid confrontation which she clearly didn’t want in the first place. He then spit as hard as he could to the back of her, yelling more profanities and daring her to turn around. As he raised his sticks towards her again as if to either scare her he was going to hit her, or actually hit her, I made a loud enough noise as to distract him, and it worked. He chose me as his new target. I stood still and faced him for a second hoping a calm eye might work, but it did not. He charged at me with sticks raised.

I decided reluctantly to call the police as he was clearly ready to threaten every passer by in a heavy pedestrian traffic area. Eventually the police came. Who knows what was said between he and the police officer, but of course he was told to move on, likely to go threaten, or worse, elsewhere.

As I was in my elevator a woman who was in with me said “Thanks! I had to avoid him when I was going out earlier”, which means she also must have witnessed me on the phone with the police, but more relevant, he had been threatening people for some time, who knows how many.

It was then that it hit home yet again. How many women were impacted by the threats of this man? I would challenge any man who witnessed this man threaten these women, “But why didn’t they do something or say something?” not dissimilar to the Dr. Ford issue in international news today in that no women impacted by this man today were willing to speak out.

Why not? It takes extreme courage, due to the unknown threat and risk of legally charging an attacker. It takes privilege, in that the repercussions of taking action are not seen as likely to affect your health, safety, and livelihood, and third, it takes the time & energy to think doing so will have any satisfactory repercussions.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of catching up with my friend Kerry, a Tibetan Buddhist Nun. This was an impromptu video where I pressed record, asked for a one minute introduction, and the conversation naturally turned to buddhism, staying true to one’s religion, selflessness, and finding purpose.

Have you found your purpose, or are you still seeking it? Other than a lot of reading, what actions do you recommend?

For those who think they’re good at debating, I challenge you to sign up for my 24 hour debate challenge. If you agree, I will partner you with someone else who is willing to debate. I will privately let you know of your position in the debate over the next 24 hours, and it’s likely I will pick something you oppose.

The rules for debaters: Avoid personal or ad hominem attacks, stick to refuting the central point of the argument. Try to avoid logical fallacies The debate will last 24 hours from when I start the thread.

The rules for others: Please don’t comment on the thread, if you like a comment, “like it”. Whichever comment gets the most likes within 24 hours, that person wins the debate.

Remember: This person doesn’t likely believe their stance, I’ve told them what their stance is for this debate.

(no recruiters mentioning their firms please — I don’t intend on using recruiters currently. If you’re not in that industry, I’m interested in hearing the benefits of using recruiters (in general) based on experience. I’ll put a call out for recommendations of recruiters if I change my mind.)

I was recently asked to do a talk on privacy & security for the local sex work industry. I asked what they were interested in, and it was mostly centered around doxxing, and how to avoid it. At the end of the talk, I gave out my business cards and suggested people reach out if they have any specific questions. One young woman told me what I feel is a tragic story, and I hope sharing it we can come up with a solution.

As the story was told to me, this young woman lived in another city in Canada, and was working an office job as an admin assistant. She had an older co-worker who really didn’t like her, and started making unprofessional comments, such as that our victim, let’s call her Jo, couldn’t possibly afford the designer handbag she wore to work. Jo said to her co-worker it was none of her business, but if she must know, her handbags meant a lot to her, and that’s what she choose to save her money up to buy. The harassment continued. One day, the harasser “accidentally” sent an interoffice email with a link to a thedirty.com article which was slut shaming Jo, using pictures from Jo’s instagram (nothing nude, one pic was in a gym working out, I’ve seen the article). But it also made several allegations about Jo, including her full name, and the city in which she lived.

Jo was furious, and called the police, who allegedly told her there was nothing they could do, as it was a cybercrime. A couple days later, Jo was called into the office, not the harasser, and was let go from her employer. Not sure what to do, she tried to apply for other jobs for over a year, but any web search by future employers would being up this article making allegations as to promiscuous behaviour. After over a year of trying to find a job she felt defeated and moved here to Vancouver, in the process legally changing her name so she could move on. The issue now, was she has no employment history with this new name, and so for over a year couldn’t find work here — and in a desperate state for income, has recently entered into the sex work industry for lack of other options.

She told this to me with an almost void emotion, stating that it’d taken her 2 years to get over that article which was still there, but she was grateful for me just listening. I told her I would look into it, and see what I could do.

I’ve provided her three solutions thus far, hopefully helpful for anyone reading this who may have had their life ruined by thedirty.com or another slutshaming website.

File a DMCA complaint: https://www.womenagainstrevengeporn.com/thedirty I would create a new email address just for this, in case they try to shame you with it — but if they did, the lawyers in the next step would have even more recourse. I think this is likely your cheapest and fastest to try to get started

I’m writing this with the hopes that as these paths are tried, one of them will be found successful, or someone who has had success will list it here as a comment for others. The other intention is to raise awareness for anyone interested in going after this website systematically, as having just heard one silent story, it makes me wonder how many other lives have been ruined.

It was based on this image that I realized we could likely select most Tweets, or Facebook comments, that are in a debate, based on one of these levels. Then, over time, you could choose to filter out levels — for example, I’ve chosen to block anyone who has scored over 100 votes of using Ad Hominem or Name-Calling attacks in a debate. I don’t need to use up my mental real estate reading this.

I’d love your feedback if you give it a try. It currently works for both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers, and you can vote on any comments or tweets on Facebook or Twitter with it.

This year while at RightsCon 2018, I met an ally named Shane Greenup who has been working on these issues longer than me. If you’re interested in this topic, you may also want to try out rbutr which is also a browser plugin.

What rbutr does is tell you when the webpage you are viewing has been disputed, rebutted or contradicted elsewhere on the internet. From there, you can easily click to read the rebuttals, which are prioritized in a crowd sourced way. I’m sure he’d love any feedback you have if you give it a try, as he’s genuinely trying to improve online discourse as well.

I have a lot of other ideas as well, as simple one would be a snopes.com option for social media — so if someone posts an old, debunked article which can easily be found on snopes.com, they would lose “social points” in debatepyramid, and so you could say, “as soon as someone has posted 10 articles debunked on snopes.com, I don’t want to read their content anymore” as if someone is doing that — that frequently, clearly their research skills are lacking and it would incentivize them to up their game in this area. I should add, the plugin would automatically post the snopes.com link as a response to their comment, by everyone using the plugin, so it would add that social pressure as well.

Thanks for reading. Let me know if you give DebatePyramid or rbutr a try, and what you’d like to see added or changed with either plugin. Also, if you have any other ideas, please share in the comments below for others interested in this topic area.

As you walk around with your cell phone on, you walk by different cell phone towers, which allow you to make a phone call no matter where you are. Your cell phone is always beaconing out; hey; which tower is closer?

Whomever responds first, wins.

Sometimes it’s an IMSI catcher, a hacker, or a government agent, or sometimes it’s a tower owned by your phone company that responds to your cell phone that it’s clear for you to make a call — but they’re all motivated to make sure your cell phone stays with you, and that the GPS stays on, and your unique phone identifies you (MAC address, Bluetooth (LTE), IMSI number, and the same phone number) as that information is worth a lot. They’ve all turned off encryption, it’s virtually non-existent for cell phone networks. This allows them to do man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks where they just listen in the middle and allow your phone call to carry on. It can be recorded and shared, forever.

Which tower is your cell phone connected to right now? Is that even a legit cell phone tower you’re connected to right now, or your neighbors briefcase? Who owns that device your cell phone is connected to?

There is nothing to be trusted about cell phone networks in 2018. The only two tools the public can use are signal.org and wire.com for secure communication, and they require a data connection. It will take at least a year from now for your cell phone provider to fix this issue, so that you know if you’re connected to them, or your nephew’s PAL receiver. This info is years old, so it’s unlikely to get fixed any time soon. Enjoy the radiation beside your genitals as your cell phone spends its time trying to find something to connect to and share its information with, at least there’s a comfortable warmth.

It’s a big week for Canadians whom work in cryptocurrency. First, the Department of Finance released an impact analysis statement around the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act.

Persons and entities that are “dealing in virtual currency” would be financial entities or other entities deemed domestic or foreign MSBs, as the case may be. These “dealing in” activities include virtual currency exchange services and value transfer services. As required of all MSBs, persons and entities dealing in virtual currencies would need to implement a full compliance program and register with FINTRAC. In addition, all reporting entities that receive $10,000 or more in virtual currency (e.g. deposits, any form of payment) would have record-keeping and reporting obligations.

These amendments serve to mitigate the money laundering and terrorist activity financing vulnerabilities of virtual currency in a way that is consistent with the existing legal framework, while not unduly hindering innovation. For this reason, the amendments are targeted at persons or entities engaged in the business of dealing in virtual currencies, and not virtual currencies themselves.

and a couple of days later, the Canadian Securities Administrators sent out a notice on Securities Law Implications for Offerings of Tokens.

Most notable it provides guidance on when an offering of tokens may or may not involve an offering of securities, and has many examples. They also recommend you work with qualified securities legal counsel as well as the regulatory bodies themselves.

We’ve all been to a website where you get a pop-up right away, asking for a conversion, for example to sign up for their newsletter. What website owners don’t usually measure is the negative impacts of such activity — if you’re only measuring the signups, and not the exits, it looks like success. Consider instead the more normal socialized model of marketing, which is to ensure that people are having a good experience before you ask. “jab jab right-hook” as GaryVee would say. Even at the end of reading my first article on a given website, if I get a popup, I’m likely to block the website from working in my browser in the future. The first few times someone comes to your website, should be a positive experience, and the website visitor should find what they’re looking for without being interrupted. It’s quite easy, technology wise, to detect when a user is back. If it’s my 5th time on your website, you know I’m hooked. At the end of an article and when I’m about to leave, not interrupting my access, would be a good time to facilitate the ask. Even then, I would consider if a popup is the best way to make that ask. If you don’t have the confidence you can attract someone to your website without a pop-up for at least 5 visits and they have a good experience being able to consume your content, consider resolving that first. This blog gets anywhere from 10k-100k hits per day now, more than many local news outlets, and I have no popups, or any experiences that will interrupt you. Build traffic with good content, and throw out an ask once in a while, to your repeat visitors.